I have the greatest privilege of being associated with Native cultures of many continents.. thus satisfying my curiosity and desire to travel and the chance to help them with my medical expertise. these notes are from those travels. I am a professor at the University of Havana

jeudi 17 août 2017

I remember the Nobel Prize winner British writer, VS Naipaul saying: when you do not have a project in life, it tends to become boring.I have a chance to counsel people, who are my patients, about purpose in life as they are contemplating retirement. Have something planned to do, even if it is a hobby or learning a language or spending time with your family, but not wake up every day wondering what you will do that day.I also teach them about Mindfulness, to enjoy the moment.Just yesterday, three of us were planning to form a consulting group so that we will be able to spread our culturally oriented philosophy of health care among Native Indians. We know that this project will take a little time to come to fruition but the three of us felt good just thinking about it. Of course each of us have some work cut out to do, more for me as I have much more free time during my travels and access to Internet.As if to support the theme, this morning, this arrives in the email:

People with “purpose in life” may age better, study suggests

TIME (8/16, MacMillan) reports people who have “a purpose in life” may age better than those who do not, according to a study published in JAMA Psychiatry. Researchers found that people “who reported having goals and a sense of meaning were less likely to have weak grip strength and slow walking speeds,” which are both “signs of declining physical ability and risk factors for disability.”

Medscape (8/16, Harrison) reports that Carol Ryff, PhD, of the University of Wisconsin, wrote an accompanying editorial, which concluded, “Leading a life of purpose not only feels good and meaningful, existentially speaking, it may also be an area of rich potential in which intervention studies and public health education programs might contribute to improved health of our ever-growing aged population.”

While the study was conducted to see whether physical conditions improved, I believe that having a project, always, whether you are young or old, gives your mind and intellect a boost and a sense of well being.

August 16, 2017

Association Between Purpose in Life and Objective Measures of Physical Function in Older Adults

QuestionIs higher purpose in life associated with lower likelihood of objectively measured declines in physical function?

FindingsIn a longitudinal cohort study of adults older than 50 years who were adequately functioning at baseline, each 1-SD increase in purpose in life was associated with a 13% decreased risk of developing weak grip strength and 14% decreased risk of developing slow walking speeds 4 years later.

MeaningA sense of purpose in life, a modifiable factor, may play an important role in maintaining physical function among older adults.

mercredi 16 août 2017

This story may seem unlikely in this era of generalized war between cultures, civilizations, and religions. And I am grateful to British journalist Ben Judah for having brought it to light in an article that appeared in the Jewish Chronicle the day after the visit to Israel of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The time is December 1971. The place is the territory then known as East Pakistan. Separated by 1,600 kilometers from West Pakistan, this Bengali part of Pakistan has been in rebellion since March.

The central government in Islamabad, rejecting the secession of what will eventually become Bangladesh, is engaged in a merciless repression, the cost of which, in lives, remains unknown even today, almost a half-century later. Half a million people may have died, of perhaps a million, 2 million, or more.

On Dec. 3, India decides to enter the conflict, to “interfere,” as one would put it today, in the domestic affairs of its neighbor so as to stop the bloodbath. The fighting rages.

The Bengali freedom fighters, known as the Mukti Bahini, now supported by India, become increasingly daring.

New Delhi’s strategy is to build up slowly and gradually, a decision. This strategy seems to many ill-suited to the Bangladesh of the day, a terrain of few roads, major rivers, and innumerable marshes. Thirteen days into the new phase of the war, with the Pakistanis having massed 90,000 troops around Dacca, the capital, against the Indians’ 3,000, New Delhi appears to be stuck and has hardly boxed itself into the beginnings of a siege. And it is at this moment that a high-ranking Indian officer, without notifying his superiors, takes a plane, lands in Dacca, presents himself to General Niazi, head of the Pakistani forces and pulls off one of the most spectacular bluffs in modern military history: “You have 90,000 men,” the Indian officer tells Niazi. “We have many more, plus the Mukti Bahini, who are full of the vengeance of their people and will give no quarter. Under the circumstances, you have only one choice: to persist in a fight that you cannot win or to sign this letter of surrender that I have drafted in my own hand, which promises you an honorable retreat. You have half an hour to decide; I’ll go have a smoke.”

Niazi, falling into the trap, chooses the second option. To the world’s amazement, 3,000 Indian soldiers accept the surrender of 90,000 Pakistanis. Tens of thousands—no—hundreds of thousands of lives on both sides are spared.

And Bangladesh is free!

The story might have ended there.

Except that the general behind the masterly coup that makes him godfather to a new Muslim country is Jewish. His name is Jack Jacobs.

He was born in 1924 in Calcutta into a Sephardic family that had arrived there from Baghdad two centuries before, leaving behind 2,000 years of history.

In 1942, learning of the ongoing extermination of Europe’s Jews, he enlists in the British army in Iraq, fights in North Africa and then moves on to Burma and Sumatra in the campaign against the Japanese.

And remaining in the military after the independence of India in 1947, he is the only Jew to rise high in the country’s military services, eventually coming to command the eastern army that, in December 1971, will be mounting the offensive against Islamabad’s legions.

It happens that I met this man 46 years ago. I was in rebellious Bangladesh, having responded to French novelist André Malraux’s call for the formation of an International Brigade to fight for a Bengali land still in limbo but suffering mightily under the hand of West Pakistan.

I had just entered Dacca with a unit of the Mukti Bahini.

In the company of Rafiq Hussain—eldest son of the first Bangladeshi family to welcome me into their home in the Segun Bagicha neighborhood, and who later became my friend—I saw Jacob at Race House on Dec. 16, standing behind (and letting himself eclipsed by) his colleague, General Jagit Singh Aurora, signing, in Niazi’s presence, the act of surrender that he had penned.

The next day, I happened to see him again with a handful of journalists and heard him speak of Malraux, whom he was reading; of Yeats, whose poems he knew by heart; of his twin Jewish and Indian identity; of Israeli General Moshe Dayan, whom he worshipped; and of the liberation of Jerusalem, which he held as an example of military skill. But to my recollection he said nothing about the intensely dramatic, stirringly romantic, face-to-face encounter with Niazi in which the war of personality carried a thousand times more weight than the war between armies — an encounter that determined the fate of the young Bangladesh.

I can picture his mischievous look. His rather heavy silhouette, unimposing in itself though emanating an incontestable authority.

And his strange and reticent way of remaining a step or two behind his comrades in arms, generals Aurora and Manekshaw, as if reluctant to claim any credit for a feat of audacity that I now know was his alone.

He appeared to me, that day, like a representative of one of the lost tribes, spreading the genius of Judaism.

He might have been a Kurtz from Kaifeng, Konkan, Malabar, or Gondar, newly returned from the heart of darkness but ready to head back up the river. Or a biblical Lord Jim or Captain MacWhirr, done for good with typhoons and ready to forge an alliance with the coolies.

People who save Jews are known in Judaism as righteous. How should one refer to a Jew who saved, raised to nationhood, and baptized a people who were not his own?

***

Translated by Steven Kennedy. You can help support Tablet’s unique brand of Jewish journalism.

mardi 15 août 2017

Topics covered are Endocrine Diseases as well as Reproductive Health in women with Diabetes.

I am a member of the Endocrine Society of America and will be happy to help any American MD/HealthCareProfessional/Other Interested parties, to attend this three day congress. There are direct flights from Miami, Charlotte, Atlanta, New York, Orlando, Fort Lauderdale, Los Angeles and Houston.

It is better to stay in private homes, please check Air BnB. The congress is held outside the main sights of interest, so it would be better to stay in Vedado which is central as well as easy to reach.

If you search for CUBA in my blog, various articles would come up.

You can contact me at : angkor.diabetes@nauta.cu. Please put Endocrinology in the subject matter. Thank you.

lundi 14 août 2017

I have never felt unwelcome in this country and I have been coming in and out of the country with certain regularity for more than twenty years. My reason to come to America differs from most other people: I am no longer a tourist, I am not an Immigrant, I am not in search of education or employmentI am here to help a poor segment of the population I have chosen to serve and I am privileged to serve: the Native Americans.The onslaught of the earlier Immigrants from Europe, pushed the native americans into unwanted corners and remote areas so I find myself in places that no visitors to the USA or even americans themselves do not goHow many of you have visitedTama, Iowa?Eagle Butte, South Dakota?Eagle Pass, Texas?Macy, Nebraska?So I have very little contact with the reality of american life, especially in the polemic times we are living now.I am treated well at the airlines, airports and rent a car counters. I shop at Trader Joe's where I buy my weeks supply of food before venturing to the interior. So my contact with "real" america" is limited indeed.Yesterday I had a glimpse of what is happening in a part of this country. It will take more than a person to make this country "great" again, it would take the collective will and a complete change in consciousness of this very class divided nation.I visited a Walmart Store in a medium sized city in Iowa. For those of you who want to learn more about the mentality of the people who live in those parts, please read Bill Bryson's comical book A LOST CONTINENT, travels through small town America.Walmart is a symbol of globalization, exploitation and marginalization and cheap imported goods. I wanted to buy some bananas (organic bananas three times the price of ordinary bananas) but water extremely cheap.I tried to smile at people, like I would do in Cuba but no one returned the smile. People looked morose and downtrodden and there were symbols of poverty everywhere. The place was full, it was a Sunday, with Mexican labourers off for the day shopping with their families, and gaggle of burqah clad somalis( why did the US government place them in this harsh climate?), american blacks and poor white people. I felt sad, I missed my little island of laughter where there is no Walmart and where finding water especially with gas takes work and walk and missed my friends there. A suitably chubby girl of mexican origin with a rather lovely name Marisol served me, but she looked at me under her heavy mascara with no trace of friendship. My Hello was not returned and when I began speaking Spanish, she completely turned off. As Octavio Paz, the Nobel Prize winning Mexican writer has said: Mexican Americans are a race of Shame, they are not proud of their ancestries. If Marisol had been a Cuban (first of all she wont be working at Walmart but instead at home doing her homework), even if she were born in USA, she would have happily replied in Spanish as Cubans are proud of their language, even if they are proficient in English. Mexicans take knowledge of Spanish as an inferiority complex as if they cant speak English. I am a native English speaker and I love speaking Spanish!The only cheerful person in that conglomeration was the older lady greeting people entering the store, she returned my smile, not the burqah clad somalis with stern faces, Black Americans with their sad faces and the Mexicans with their shamed faces. A Black American looked at me threateningly as I pushed innocently my cart too close to him and cursed me beneath his breath.I felt indeed very sad. They are poor, I said to myself, their hopes for the future has already been defined by their limited capacity to reach the measure of success in this country: Money. Mexicans have lost their symbols and rituals and thus any source of strength, the Somalis are trying to create something without realizing that their creation is taking them away from their American dream. Poor Immigrant women from Morocco or Somalia wear buqah in the west, and their sisters in their home countries wear traditional clothes, so they are trying to create a tradition which is alien to this society which prides in integration and not separation. and to which they have willingly migrated.I have been a recipient of the best of the American culture, hospitality, open mindedness and generosity.I will never forget when I arrived here as a Exchange Student while studying Medicine in London, the Faculty and Staff went out of their way to make me welcome, make sure that my life was comfortable and that I learned as much as I could. I am always grateful to them. I especially think of the late Dr Howard Lessner and Dr Phil Glade both of whom helped me at JMH when I was a Foreign student in these shores. I still remain foreign, but I am well integrated into the psyche of the America, I understand the aspirations and desperations but as my good friend Lincoln Myers of Trinidad said: we don't share its future goals and directions.As I write this, I realize that the best antidote to these social upheavals in Europe and USA is to continue devoting my professional and social time to others.American Indians believe that goodness of your action is reflected in the generations that follow you. I know LBGS is blessed so is the miracle recovery of my sister JRC-S.

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Welcome to Cuba, Welcome to My World and Yours as well

Ever since I was a child, I have lived in two countries at a time and the countries changed: Brunei, Australia, Sweden, USA, England, Jamaica, various places in the USA..Now Cuba and USA with a definite commitment to the North American Indians (Los Indios)..

For a period, 2001-2014, there were numerous visits to Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia, Indonesia and Myanmar.Hope you enjoy reading my emotional outpourings, written on the road.. from a lover of Cuban Mind and Affections inside the island and the innocence of the Indigenous peoples..

We live with great expectation that the new rapprochement with the Govt of President Obama, will bring more changes, intellectual and cross cultural contacts and a broadening of the minds on both sides of the Straits.

I highly recommend that you come to visit CUBA now..

Qui êtes-vous ?

Ever since being a Medical Student and Trainee Doctor in Melbourne, London and Miami, I have been involved in Interantional Medicine . Currently I am associated with the excellent Peer to Peer Network for Diabetes care in Cambodia, Mo Po Tsyo, www.mopotsyo.org.
Also with the help of my good friends in Bogor, Indonesia we hope to do something similar but in a much smaller scale.
It is easy to tell you what I am: an Endocrinologist and a Medical Anthropologist, engaged in both fields.
Cuba, Miami and American Indians are the worlds that usually I rotate around. in the occident and Cambodia and Indonesia in the orient.